I've tried various things
1.)
Gigapan beta with a Canon SX10is worked pretty well. It has a telephoto lens that'll go to 560mm ( 35mm equiv ) that's pretty sharp. Image quality wasn't as good as I would have liked due to JPEG compression artifacts. I had to rig an external battery pack for the Gigapan and use freshly charged high capacity batteries for the camera. The limiting factor was the external battery pack. I was using RC car batteries, but they didn't last long enough for what I wanted.
2.)
The next rig was the Epic 100 with a Canon XSi DSLR and a Tamron 55B 500mm f8 mirror lens.
I went all out for battery power with a 11v 11Ah poly lithium battery and custom cabling with voltage regulation to drive both the camera and Epic.
Power wise this has worked out perfectly. A full charge on the battery will drive the Epic and camera for an entire trip. I've never run the battery down!
Camera/lens wise it sucks. The lens isn't very sharp and is near impossible to focus. DOF is next to nothing. I may have been getting more pixels, but I'm not sure I was getting more detail.
3.)
For my next setup I'm going to try substituting the XSi/Tamron 55B with a Canon SX40HS. This is 3 models past the SX10 so it has many improvements. It has a lens that goes to 840mm ( 35mm equiv ). The main problem is it doesn't have an external shutter release so I'll either have to use the clunky mechanical pusher on the Epic 100, or hack the camera. Another problem is the memory card slot is under the camera mount. I can't change the card in the middle of a Gigapan. I won't be able to change the cards in the middle of a shoot. It seems like the memory cards are NEVER large enough! Time to get some 32Gb cards

The Gigapan Epic Pro is too large and heavy for a multi-day backpacking trip. Size and weight is top of the list in my selection criteria.
That means that whatever camera/lens I use has to fit on the Epic 100.
Welcome to the GigaPan Store!There are multiple sources of off-the-shelf hardware and software to do gigapixel images. It's pretty easy to do now compared to 5 years ago.
Men don't grow up, the just get more expensive toys.
sorry for hijacking the thread, i'll slink off into the peanutgallery now. . .
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2012 10:19PM by qumqats.